


Barry&Iris

by LaurytheLatrator



Category: DCU, The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Ambiguous Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 09:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2617304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaurytheLatrator/pseuds/LaurytheLatrator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For as long as she knew him, Iris had loved Barry Allen. Not romantically, not always (but not never).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Barry&Iris

For as long as she knew him, Iris had loved Barry Allen. Not romantically, not always (but not never).

The idea of a romance with Barry had occurred to her more than once in her life. When she was six, and Karen Fipps whispered about kissing with tongues during recess, and Iris had watched Barry’s scrunch up in disgust, complete with tongue sticking out, and hadn’t been able to shake the weird thought of what his tongue would feel like. Or when he made a mad dash down the hall at fourteen, still soaking wet and clutching their bright orange towel around his waist because he had forgotten to bring his clothes, and Iris had laughed her head off until she noticed his blush went all the way to his chest. Or when Barry was lying on a hospital bed, unresponsive after his second episode of cardiac arrest, and she got to thinking, seriously, if she ever would’ve dated Barry, or kissed Barry, or any number of things if she had known she would lose him so quickly, so suddenly, and that it would feel like all the air had been snatched from her lungs.

She cried for hours that night because every time she thought she had it under control, another memory would surface of his shyly muffled laugh or the juice from an apple running down his chin or his unkempt collar, and her heart stopped over and over again and Iris didn’t know how Barry could stand it. It wasn’t just missed opportunities she mourned, it was all of him, because she loved him unequivocally, not romantically or platonically or familially, but something unique to _Barry &Iris_.

So when Barry tells her with tears in his eyes and a lump in his throat that He. _Loves_. Her. Iris doesn’t move. She can’t draw breath. She can’t hear past the whirring in her ears. She can’t force a single thought to the fore.

Because she knows what he means and she doesn’t. It comes out of nowhere and it’s perfectly clear.  He likes her and he loves her and he’s in love with her. Only she can’t see how he can separate it all enough to make sense.

“Barry, I…” Words slip from her lips in a tangle. “Why—what are you… saying, doing, I can’t—“

“I know, okay, I know.” He cuts through her cleanly. “You have a boyfriend, and you love him, and I… I know you don’t…” Brokenly, he shakes his head. “I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have to deal with this, I’m sorry.” His voice shakes the way it has since they were kids, whenever he got emotional. But she hears something else, she hears fear, raw and real and bigger than this moment between them.

Iris edges closer, apprehensive and unsure why. “Barry, what’s going on?”

“There’s…” He takes a step back. “There’s no time. But I couldn’t—I didn’t want to keep secrets from you, not now, and this was one…” He laughs all wrong, too loud and too hard and too sad. “This was the easiest to tell.”

“Please, Barry, you aren’t making sense.” She can’t stop saying his name, as if the sound will bring back the man she knows and not the one standing in shadow and talking like he’s off to the gallows. “Why now? If,” She has to swallow hard, “If you’ve felt this way a while, why tell me now?”

He doesn’t answer, but he does move. With long slow strides of his lanky legs, Barry crosses to her and cups her face in his palms. Iris’ eyes fall shut because she can feel the tremors in his fingers. So slowly she cannot even sense him move, his lips brush her forehead, a butterfly’s kiss. The summer between fourth and fifth grade, they’d made a game of exchanging butterfly kisses with their eyelashes against the other’s hand, daring the other to squirm away first. Their laughter had been endless and pure. His lips light her soul with the same awe as back then, that tingle in her belly at the feeling of complete tenderness. Tears squeeze through tightly shut lids as Iris struggles to stay silent.

“Watch the news tonight.” Is all he whispers, and he’s gone before Iris opens her eyes.

_She can’t, she can’t, she can’t…_

Calls from Eddie go ignored as Iris flips obsessively through the channels, from one droning anchor to the next, searching blindly for whatever Barry needs her to see. In the end, it is not Iris who finds the right channel, the channel finds her. The screen dims and flickers mid sentence, and then it’s grainy footage from a vertical phone.

Iris leans forward immediately because that’s him, it’s _The Streak_ , but he’s not looking good. Flanked on either side by two burly men in suits, holding the sagging listless body clad in red by each arm. His head is low, but he doesn’t look unconscious, there’s a rigidity too him that’s frightening, because someone who can move that fast should not be so stiff. And Iris knows with aching certainty that he chose to be there, that he’s resigned to whatever fate is in store. She wonders fleetingly, as the dawning horror takes hold of her thoughts, what it is that brought him here.

There’s a too familiar noise of a shotgun pump, and the barrel appears from behind the camera. Her breath stalls in her throat. The camera jumps as whoever holds it and the gun approaches him. There are no words exchanged as they aim the barrel at The Streak’s head. Iris can’t move for the second time that night.

For one second, the beaten body of the hero stirs. Sluggishly, he raises his head. Blue eyes bore into the camera and he’s looking at her, _she knows those eyes_.

The screen goes black.


End file.
